Altermagnets can turn neighbouring materials altermagnetic, too – Physics World

Skip to main content

SearchOpen Search Dialog

Search by content type, topic, person, research area and more

SearchSubmit search

IOP Publishing

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on LinkedIn

Watch us on Youtube

RSS Feed

Jobs

Sign in<br>Register

Enter e-mail address

Enter password

Show passwordPassword field is now showing your password

Remember me

Forgot your password?

Are you an IOP member?<br>Sign into your Physics World account to get access to all available digital issues of the monthly magazine. Your Physics World account is separate to any IOP accounts you may have

Sign in to

Access more than 20 years of online content

Manage which e-mail newsletters you want to receive

Read about the big breakthroughs and innovations across 13 scientific topics

Explore the key issues and trends within the global scientific community

Enter e-mail address

Are you an IOP member?<br>Create a Physics World account to get access to all available digital issues of the monthly magazine. Your Physics World account is separate to any IOP accounts you may have.

Note: The verification e-mail to complete your account registration should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder.

If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact customerservices@ioppublishing.org.

Registration is free, quick and easy

Access more than 20 years of online content

Choose which e-mail newsletters you want to receive

Read about the big breakthroughs and innovations across 13 scientific topics

Explore the key issues and trends within the global scientific community

Reset your password

Please enter the e-mail address you used to register to reset your password

Note: The verification e-mail to change your password should arrive immediately. However, in some cases it takes longer. Don't forget to check your spam folder.

If you haven't received the e-mail in 24 hours, please contact customerservices@ioppublishing.org

Enter e-mail address

Registration complete

Thank you for registering with Physics World

If you'd like to change your details at any time, please visit My account

Close

Magnetism and spin

-->

Home »<br>Condensed matter » Magnetism and spin » Altermagnets can turn neighbouring materials altermagnetic, too

Magnetism and spin

Research update

Altermagnets can turn neighbouring materials altermagnetic, too

11 Jun 2026 Isabelle Dumé

Illustration of the altermagnetic proximity effect Like a chameleon adapting its colours, a nonmagnetic material aligns its spin-density pattern with a neighbouring altermagnet, acquiring altermagnetic spin textures (red and blue diamonds) via the altermagnetic proximity effect. (Courtesy: Tong Zhou/EIT)">

Illustration of the altermagnetic proximity effect Like a chameleon adapting its colours, a nonmagnetic material aligns its spin-density pattern with a neighbouring altermagnet, acquiring altermagnetic spin textures (red and blue diamonds) via the altermagnetic proximity effect. (Courtesy: Tong Zhou/EIT)

Altermagnets can transfer their unusual magnetic properties to nonmagnetic materials placed next to them, say theorists in China and the US. This so-called “proximity effect” had already been observed in ferromagnets and superconductors, but it is new for altermagnets, which were only recognized as a distinct class of magnetic materials in 2024. If confirmed experimentally, the team says the effect could aid the development of advanced quantum materials with applications in fields such as spintronics, valleytronics and fault-tolerant quantum computing.

In ferromagnets, proximity effects make it possible to tune properties such as magnetic anisotropy, coercivity and exchange bias in nonmagnetic materials that have acquired magnetic polarization from a neighbouring ferromagnet. Similarly, ordinary materials that have picked up superconducting correlations from a nearby superconductor are a mainstay of experiments on topological superconductivity and topological quantum computing.

In the latest research, physicists led by Tong Zhou of the Eastern Institute of Technology in Ningbo sought to understand whether altermagnets could likewise transfer their behaviour to a neighbouring material. To do this, they created a model of a van der Waals bilayer heterostructure in which the bottom layer is a two-dimensional (2D) altermagnet, V2Se2O, while the top layer is a non-magnetic semiconductor, PbO.

Zhou explains that the vanadium atoms in V2Se2O form two opposite-spin sublattices that are connected by rotational symmetry rather than by simple translation or inversion. This complex structure is what gives V2Se2O its characteristic altermagnetic spin splitting, with a band structure in which spin-up and spin-down electrons have different energies that vary in periodic patterns. V2Se2O also has a so-called spin texture, which is a pattern of spin...